At integraSoft, we are continually looking for ways to improve our products, services and support. We always receive a lot of feedback from customers in regards to how they want to communicate with employees at our company.
In short, our customers want to be able to quickly and easily communicate with our people when they want, using any medium they want, whether by Phone, Mobile, Voice Mail, Email, IntegraLink, Skype, text messaging… Overall, a fairly broad set of communication methods and tools.
Some customers like speaking directly with our receptionist. Some want the ability to leave a voice mail. Others want the ability to dial the individual employee they are working with directly. Our customers span 49 of the 50 states, which means we need to provide methods for easy communication during our central US business hours as well as outside 8-5 central business hours.
To help our customers reach the right person more quickly, answer questions on first contact, and enable better communication outside our normal business hours, we do what we do best: put technology to work. Not only are we a Microsoft partner in reselling Office 365, but we utilize it internally as well.
Office 365 is more than just document software in Word, Excel & Powerpoint. It includes very powerful communications services in Lync and Exchange. Together, Lync and Exchange support Unified Communications, which gives us the ability to have integrated Voice Mail, Auto Attendant and phone extensions for all of our employees with our traditional Office tools including Outlook. The new solution enables several things….
- Provides voice mail, allowing customers to call anytime 24/7 and leave an audio message for our employees.
- Resolve support cases more quickly by using voice mail as appropriate. Customers can provide as much technical detail as they like and we don’t have to worry about translating through another person or, in some cases, getting a call back to gather the necessary information to “act” on a customer request.
- Enables our employees who are working outside the office to have their business calls follow them, through simultaneous ring or call forwarding so they can answer customer calls or respond more quickly, even when not at their desk.
- Customer voice mails are now stored as audio files and translated to text automatically. We can easily forward these to the right resource for follow up or attach to support cases to include as part of case history.
- As a company, this solution provides a modern communications platform enabling future options such as instant messaging and direct “ Business to Business Chat” for support. In the future, speaking with an integraSoft resource could be just a mouse click away.
Finally, it enables us as a business to consolidate & reduce our communications spending by removing legacy phone linessystem, office phone wiring (office moves), eliminates our 3rd party conference call provider and leverages the spend on our internet connection. Overall this saves us communications costs while enabling more communication options and a better experience for our customers.
Next time you call integraSoft, you will notice a change. You will still hear the voice of our receptionist & support coordinator Julie, but you will be given an automatic option to speak directly with someone in Sales, Consulting or Support by pressing a menu option.
If you choose the employee directory you will also be given the option to enter the last name or email address of one of our employees and be transferred directly to their extension to chat with them or leave a voice mail. If you like the old approach of just talking with Julie press 0 or 2 to be directed to her as usual.
We would appreciate your feedback on these changes the next time you have a chance to chat with one of our employees as we work to continue improving our products and services. If you’re interested in how Office 365 and unified communications might be able to help your organization please contact our sales team and we can schedule a discussion, overview and demo.
We appreciate the opportunity to continue collaborating and servicing your organization for years to come. Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us today!